Hunting the VA Slayer

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “Follow me,” she ordered.

  Arn stayed a safe distance behind her as they walked up the steps and she used her security card to open the door to the hallway leading to the chief’s office. “Remember,” she said as she tapped the watch on her wrist before shutting the door. “Make it damn quick, Anderson.”

  Chief Oblanski’s crew-cut head was just visible above the back of his desk as if he had lost something on the floor. “Safe to come out now, she’s gone,” Arn said as heavy footsteps faded down the hallway.

  “Thank God,” he said and stood from his fortress. “That woman is running me to death.”

  Arn pointed to the stack of paperwork sitting on the corner of Oblanski’s desk. “Looks like you got enough Chief work to last for years.”

  “At least until the next budget is in. I’m just damn glad I’m not chief of your old department.”

  Arn understood where Oblanski was coming from. More than a few times he had walked in his Captain’s office at Metro Denver right before budget time to find the poor bastard nearly bawling trying to put figures together.

  Oblanski sat and motioned for Arn to do so as well. “As much as I hate seeing you come through the door—because I know you’ll be a pain in the butt—you are a welcome distraction from this,” he said and slapped the pile of papers. “Want something to drink?”

  “Last time I was here, the machine had a mind of its own like something out of a Steven King novel.”

  “I had Mort down in IT reprogram it.”

  “Then I’ll have a cup,” Arn said, “of whatever you’re having.” He set his hat on the chair beside him while he watched Oblanski swivel in his chair. He punched buttons on the new beverage machine, and it started whirling.

  “What brings you here when you ought to be out golfing?”

  “I don’t golf,” Arn said. “Never could get the hang of hitting those little balls on the fly with my .38.”

  When the machine finished spewing out the liquid, Oblanski handed Arn a cup. “What’s this?” he asked, sniffing the hot liquid.

  “Green tea,” Oblanski said. “You said you were having what I’m having.”

  “You been talking to Ana Maria?”

  Oblanski held up his hands. “Not me. But this does help one’s regularity.”

  “Why the hell is my regularity all of a sudden the object of public scrutiny? You have so been talking with Ana Maria.”

  “Getting back to my question…” Oblanski quickly changed the subject.

  “Helen Mosby asked me to look into her husband’s death.”

  “Frank Mosby?”

  Arn nodded. “Your department still assists the VA Police?”

  “We do,” Oblanski answered. “But what’s there to look into?”

  Arn eyed the trash can on one side of Oblanski’s desk, gauging if he could toss the tea in it without being seen. “Helen’s brother, Steve, died at a VA Center in South Dakota two months ago of an apparent heart attack as well.”

  Oblanski sipped his tea and turned up his nose as if regretting going healthy this morning. “I’m still not following you.”

  “Helen just wants to make sure both men died naturally.”

  “I can’t speak for her brother, but the coroner assured me Frank Mosby died of heart problems.” He stopped mid-mouth and set his cup down. “If I’m hearing you correctly, if Helen doesn’t think their deaths were natural—.”

  “They were murdered,” Arn said. “At least that’s what she is convinced of.”

  “Well, her suspicions are flat wrong,” Oblanski said.

  “Based on?”

  “The Medical Examiner, I already told you.”

  “So, the ME performed an autopsy on Frank?” Arn asked.

  “If you’ve been talking with Helen, you know there was no autopsy. None needed, and she didn’t demand one at the time.” He nodded to his cup of tea. “Aren’t you going to drink it?”

  “I’m thinking of tossing it. I’m a coffee guy.”

  Oblanski grinned. “Coffee doesn’t help your condition—.”

  “What condition?”

  “Just trying to nip it in the bud,” Oblanski said. “All you old folks have GI issues.” He reached around and tossed the rest of his tea in the garbage beside his desk. “Don’t blame you, though—I’ll make us some coffee.”

  Oblanski stood and walked to a small cabinet behind where Arn sat before stopping. “Seriously, if we ordered an autopsy on everyone who died an unattended death—natural though it may appear—the department would run out of funds.”

  Arn understood. When he worked for Metro Denver Homicide, they would get called to all sorts of deaths that were natural—medical complications or weather-related deaths or for folks whose life just plain ran out. Unless there was something pointing to something other than natural, they did not order autopsies, either. “You did take photos, though?”

  “Of course, we did,” Oblanski said and motioned to Arn’s cup. “Want another?”

  “I’ll wait for the coffee to brew. Wouldn’t want my regularity to catch up with me right here in your office.”

  “Me neither,” Oblanski said.

  “Can I take a peek at those photos?” Arn asked Oblanski as he was measuring grounds.

  Oblanski laughed and turned the pot on. “Are you a member of this department? Of course not. Ergo, you have no right to look at the photos.”

  “Thought you said Frank’s death was natural. If that were true, what harm would it do to show a curious citizen what the scene looked like?”

  “Look, Arn, I’d like to show you the pictures and diagrams of the scene—.”

  “Have you ever meet Helen Mosby?’ Arn asked.

  Oblanski grabbed a pencil among others stuck in an empty mug on his desk and began chewing the eraser off. Like he often did when he started getting nervous. “I gave her the death notice myself.”

  “Then you know,” Arn said, “that she’s just like your sainted mother. Grieving. Wanting answers.”

  Oblanski dropped his pencil in the garbage and turned to the coffee pot. “She’s not like my mother,” he said. “My mother was a stripper in Seattle and the only time she grieved was when she got too wasted and fell off the pole during a… performance.” He handed Arn a cup of coffee and sat with his own behind his desk. He looked out the window of his second-story office at the First Interstate Bank building across the street as if people coming and going had the answers. “I’ll ask Gorilla Legs to grab the file,” he said at last.

  “And not your new secretary?”

  “My new secretary, Mary, is busy making people feel welcome to this office. Gorilla Legs still doles out files. When I ask her real nice. Excuse me.”

  “Good luck,” Arn said as Oblanski left the office to grab the files. “If you need backup with that woman, call one of your brutes you have working the street.”

  Arn felt empathy for Oblanski as he walked out his office to ask Gorilla Legs for the file. Even though Oblanski was Chief, Arn knew she’d just as soon wrestle him to the ground over the file as comply with his request.

  After many minutes and as Arn was contemplating calling 911 to rescue Oblanski, he burst through the door and shut it immediately. “She wanted me to remind you that you need to cut our visit short.”

  “As short as I can,” Arn said. “Last thing I want is for her to give me the bum’s rush.”

  Oblanski smiled. “That would be a YouTube moment. Here.” He handed Arn the file on Frank Mosby. “While you’re looking it over, I’ll be working on my budget. Gorilla Legs gave me until the end of the day for my patrol budget requests. Or else.”

  Arn cringed when he imagined what her or else might entail. He opened the file folder across his lap and read the report: a Korean War veteran had walked into the restroom and found Frank lying dead b
eside the sink. The vet called the VA police who summoned the Cheyenne Police investigators.

  Arn set the VA report aside and flipped to the Cheyenne PD report. After he quickly scanned it, he went back and reread it closer: there was nothing to indicate an unnatural death. The investigating officer had called their crime scene tech to respond to take photographs only because Frank’s death was unattended. No witnesses to see him collapse in the restroom.

  Arn picked up the stack of photos and donned his reading glasses. He held each photo away from the glare of the overhead lights. Even though it appeared Frank died of medical conditions, the police photographer had done a thorough job of documenting the scene. Frank’s body had been photographed from multiple angles, all which combined told a story. When Frank collapsed, his cheek cut from where he hit the stainless-steel paper towel dispenser, slight blood drying on the dispenser.

  The bruise on the side of his neck might have been caused when he fell against the sink going down—the investigator had speculated in his report, and a large gash on Frank’s forehead matched a blood spot on the floor where he fell, his final resting place.

  Arn grabbed the photos and reports and stuffed them back into the folder. He handed it back to Oblanski, hunched over a calculator and eyeballing figures and spreadsheets and request forms. “See anything unusual?”

  Arn shook his head. “Looks pretty cut and dry.”

  “Pretty cut and dry?”

  “The reports and photos corroborate the coroner’s findings—that he went down from a heart attack.”

  “I hear a but in there somewhere.”

  Arn nodded. “I’ll know more when I see the report on Helen’s brother.”

  “So, you’re going up to Ft. Meade in the middle of the Sturgis Rally?”

  “I have to.”

  Oblanski held up his coffee cup. “Then I toast the bravest man in Wyoming.”

  3

  “THANKS FOR TAGGING ALONG,” ARN said. “I know it’s your off-day.”

  “I needed out of the newsroom for a while anyway,” Ana Maria said. She rummaged through Arn’s aging selection of eight-tracks in his tape box. “Yanni. Are you serious?”

  “Give me a break—it’s hard to find eight tracks no matter how many garage sales I go to.”

  She selected Johnny Cash taped at Folsom Prison. “We are not listening to Yanni.” She slid the tape into the player mounted under the dash of the old Oldsmobile. “As for being my day off, I wouldn’t miss the chance to see a lot of cool bikes.”

  Arn chuckled. “You just want to see the hot bikers riding them.”

  They pulled off Interstate 90 and Arn had to slow. Motorcycles cluttered the road four abreast, riding overly slow, wearing the colors of the Devil’s Jokers. One biker glanced behind at the traffic backed up by the bike and turned back, undeterred. He said something to the others, and they chuckled. “This is my first time here in Sturgis during Bike Week,” AnaMaria said, staring wide-eyed out the window. “My God, there are bikes everywhere.”

  “Last year Sturgis had an estimated six-hundred-thousand attending the rally,” Arn said, down shifting into second as the bikers slowed even more.

  Ana Maria rolled the window up to shut out the fumes. “Wish you’d get air conditioning for this beast. It’s damn near a hundred degrees.”

  Arn grinned. “You could keep your window rolled down.”

  “Not on your life.” Ana Maria coughed as she stared at motorcycles headed both ways, most ridden by frightening-looking bikers even Arn wouldn’t want to meet in a lit alley, let alone a dark one.

  The four bikers turned off into a convenience store, and Arn passed two others, a man wearing a mohawk, and a woman in tube top and assless-chaps. The woman stuck out her tongue at Ana Maria in a crude gesture, and her face turned crimson. “You got your gun I hope?” Ana Maria asked.

  “I do,” he said, “and—unless you sold the one I loaned you couple months ago—you should have yours with you as well.” He laughed nervously. “Not that our two little guns would keep this swarm back for any amount of time.”

  “Oh, God— “.

  “Relax,” Arn said. “It’s not as bad as it seems. Most bikers who come to Sturgis every year are decent folks just having fun and acting stupid before returning to their ordinary lives.” He drove around two others gawking at his car like they never saw a classic Olds before. “It’s those one-percenters like those boobs we just passed that give the others a bad name.”

  At Lazelle Street, they had to wait until an ambulance and two police cars sped by. “Accident?” she asked.

  “More like somebody got stupid at the Buffalo Chip.”

  They headed east and Ana Maria rolled the window down again when the riders had petered out.

  “When were you here last?” Arn asked.

  “Last year,” Ana Maria answered. “I had to pick up a steering column for that ’55 Merc I restored. Found one from Jim’s Salvage—neat place situated towards the airport. I could hang out there all week they have so many cool parts. But I’ve never been here during Bike Week.”

  “And you were never tempted to come here during the rally and get wild and crazy?”

  She shook her head. “I was tempted once when I met a dude online who claimed to be a doctor. Said he attended the rally every year— .”

  “You’re not still on those dating sites,” Arn said, “’cause you could probably find a man with the way you look.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I think.”

  “And the last time you answered a profile ad on a dating site it damn near got you killed. You forgetting that?”

  “How could I,” she answered.

  When she worked at the television station in Denver, Ana Maria answered an online dating profile. The man sounded ideal—a man Ana Maria’s age. Wanting children. A real hunk by his picture. A doctor he said. When she finally met him, he wasn’t Ana Maria’s age but much older. He didn’t want children—it would interfere with his life’s work of abducting unsuspecting women. His picture was nothing like he’d posted, nothing that might identify him. And the only thing about Ana Maria’s online love that was professional was that he was professional killer, intent on making her his next victim. As for a doctor, he called himself one—Doc Henry. He’d kept her prisoner in his ratty, run-down brownstone until Arn rescued her. The dating site was merely how the sociopath had lured Ana Maria and many others. “Thought you would have learned your lesson.”

  She laid her hand on his shoulder. “Relax. I did. I thoroughly checked this last guy out—he was a groundskeeper at the college and was even older than you, if you can believe that. Besides, I haven’t logged onto one of those sites for some time.”

  They passed the sign announcing they were entering Ft. Meade VA Center, and Arn recalled what he had read about it when he was a youngster in school. The Army had established Ft. Meade in 1876 to protect miners and settlers in the Black Hills from Lakota and Cheyenne Indians bent on driving the white man from their sacred grounds. As they followed the signs to the Administrating Building, Arn thought how they could use the cavalry right about now. A crowd of forty-odd men and women blocked the road, anti-government chants echoing off the buildings, waving signs attacking the VA.

  One man—slightly built with the distinct odor of marijuana reeking from his tattered clothing—banged on the front fender and looked in the window when Arn stopped. His greasy and stained arm band matched the logo on the sign he carried—Righteous Sword of the Lord. Arn slipped his revolver from his pocket and placed it under his leg. “You here for medical attention?” the man asked. He started leaning into the window when Arn pushed him away. “What the hell’s it to you?”

  The man fidgeted with dirty silver colonel wings on his lapels as he looked about for backup, but the others were too absorbed in their chants and the waving of their silly signs to
pay them any attention. “If you’re a veteran, you’re part of the problem.”

  “What problem?”

  “The U. S. military, of course,” the man said.

  “I’ve never been in the military.”

  “Then you can drive on through.” He circled his hand overhead and the crowd parted to let the Olds through.

  Ana Maria turned in her seat and watched the crowd through the back window. “What was that all about?”

  “Who the hell knows. Protesting something. None of our business, though.”

  They drove another two blocks to the admin building and climbed out, the chanting still audible two blocks over here. “You really think these government people will tell us anything about Steve Urchek’s death?” Ana Maria asked, as she had several times since they left Cheyenne.

  “Bureaucrats are too damned worried about their pensions,” Arn answered as he locked the car. “Wouldn’t tell me squat on the phone, but I’m hoping you can persuade them.”

  “It’s not like they’re going to pity us after a five-hour drive. What makes you think they’ll tell us anything about Helen’s brother now?”

  “By talking to another brother.”

  “How’s that?”

  “By talking to a brother in blue—I’m going to talk with the head of their VA police. If he’s like other cops, he and I will have solidarity, me being retired law enforcement and all. He’ll sneak me the information we’re looking for.”

  4

  THE BROTHER IN BLUE RUNNING the VA Police at Ft. Meade wasn’t a he at all. The sister in blue was an attractive lady in her mid-thirties, strawberry blond hair pulled back in a tight bun, wearing just the proper amount of makeup so as to look the part of a professional. Lieutenant Misti Waddie smoothed her dark blue uniform shirt before sitting across from Arn and Ana Maria at the long conference table. She glared at them for long moments before speaking. “Let me get this straight—you propose that I allow you to examine all information on the death two months ago of this Steve Urchek?”